Sydney Smith Lee

Sydney Smith Lee (2 September 1802-22 July 1869) was a Confederate States Navy captain during the American Civil War and the brother of Robert E. Lee.

Biography
Sydney Smith Lee was born in Camden, New Jersey in 1802, the son of Henry Lee III and the older brother of Robert E. Lee. He became a midshipman in the US Navy in 1820 and fought in the Siege of Veracruz during the Mexican-American War, later accompanying Commodore Matthew Perry to Japan in 1853 as commander of USS Mississippi, Perry's flagship. When the American Civil War broke out, he joined the Confederate States Navy as a captain, but he was reluctant to betray the United States, believing that South Carolina had gotten Virginia into the "snarl" of secession. His son Fitzhugh Lee served as a Confederate States Army during the war and as Governor of Virginia twenty years later. Sidney Smith Lee died in 1869.